What I’m trying to ask is, if the slave trade develop in order to bring slave labor to America, de facto viewing the subjects brought across the ocean as inferior (I’m guessing due to skin color and cultural differences) why did it not develop with the indigenous people in the americas as well? They were different colors skin and culturally different, and it wouldn’t have required transporting millions of people across a very large ocean.
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It sort of did, there were absolutely indigenous slaves.
I think 3 aspects you can’t ignore are –
1) Indigenous peoples were more self-sufficient in their back yards. They could more easily escape and survive back in their homes. African slaves had nothing to attract them to escape (other than almost certain death) so it was easier to keep them docile.
2) Black slaves were pretty cheap and easy to get, they had a set up a system where groups in Africa were capturing the slaves themselves, gathering them all up and then selling to the Europeans. It’s not like they were hunting for black people in the woods of Africa, the Africans were selling themselves to Europeans in large groups.
3) Disease tolerance – This is complex one but European diseases wiped out unimaginable quantities of indigenous Americans. There was a prevailing belief up through even the late 1800’s that African people were immune to most diseases and were thus made the best slaves.
It did, in many places. Thousands if not millions of natives perished due to being overworked, especially in South America.
People of African origin seemed to deal with slave work better. They had “better results” and were dying less. There are even contemporary comments from Spanish officials overseeing slave work in Spanish colonies commenting on how Africans were “bigger, stronger, more resilient and required less water, food and rest than natives”. How true is that is probably impossible to try to measure.
There were actually slave trade between Europe and Africa before America was discovered. We do not actually know how old this slave trade was. But the slaves were not always from Africa to Europe, usually it was the other way around. In general slaves are being sold to places that need workers to work vast fields. Throughout history you have found slaves working in areas with vast amounts of farmland supporting a population growth. This have been the case with several African empires who needed slaves but also occasionally in Europe.
The trans Atlantic slave trade started up because there were plenty of farmland being cleared in America and the local Indian population were being killed in the millions from the harsh slave conditions as well as new diseases. So the colonial plantation owners turned to slaves imported from Africa. Most of the farms in Europe was already being run by free men so there was no need for slaves.
I am not saying that the treatment the slaves were given was justifiable. The Afro-American slaves were working under some of the worst conditions throughout written history. But it did not just appear out of nowhere.
I have a Master’s degree in Native American history so I feel pretty darn confident in answering this. In North America there were a few enslaved natives. In South America there were many more enslaved natives. I assume you are referring to North America so here is why:
Cultural differences: Native American tribes were often organized in decentralized communities. This made it difficult for the colonists to establish a system of slavery based on the existing Native American social structures. In Africa it was common for higher classes to enslave lower classes and then sell those people to Europeans. This process started well before anyone knew North America existed, and it was easier to expand existing slave trade routes with known “partners” than create entirely new ones.
Geographic factors: The Native American tribes were spread out across vast territories and had varying levels of interaction with European colonists. Unlike the African slave trade, which involved capturing and transporting large numbers of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Most African slaves are from west africa (which is why Americans are “used to” a certain appearance of black people. Africa is very diverse and most Americans only see one or two common ethnic groups and their similar appearance.
Disease and population decline: The arrival of Europeans brought with them various diseases to which Native Americans had no immunity. These diseases, such as smallpox, ravaged Native American populations, causing significant population declines. The reduced population numbers made it less feasible for the colonists to enslave Native Americans on a large scale.
Economic factors: The early Spanish colonists initially sought to exploit the Americas for resources, particularly valuable commodities like gold and silver. They enslaved natives who were familiar with the terrain and had established communities that were easy to overrun with their guns. In North America, the English were more focused on agriculture which needed more people. Since there were few native settlements in that part of the continent, it was harder to overrun and ensalve the people needed to run the plantations.
Legal considerations: As European powers began to colonize the Americas, legal frameworks were established to govern the colonies. Some of these legal systems recognized the humanity and rights of Native Americans, providing certain protections and limitations on the treatment of indigenous peoples. While these legal protections were often disregarded or violated, they still served as a barrier to the widespread enslavement of Native Americans.
It is important to note that while Native Americans were not enslaved on the same scale as Africans, they did experience forced labor, exploitation, displacement, and other forms of mistreatment at the hands of European colonizers.
Europeans did enslave the native population but with a different set of results. Many of them died from disease and many simply ran away. They were never subjugated under a labor system like the Africans were. They had acute knowledge of the land, unique weapons to fight back with, and human networks to resist. They were murdered and displaced in various ways, which is different.
Portugal was the first and primary trader of slaves. They were first sent to Brazil, not North America. Since Portugal colonized Brazil, they were bringing slaves to help themselves.
One good reason for not making the indigenous population there slaves is that it would be more outrage. If you bring in foreigners that the indigenous had never seen nor cared about, they would care less than if their own family had been enslaved. Attempting enslave the population of Brazil would have more likely resulted in war.
Africans had already set up the space trade so it was just “easy”, relatively.
Where in America is an African slave going to run to where they can get away? Where is a native American going to run to to get away? Reaction of the local population to keeping foreign slaves? Reaction of the local population to keeping local slaves?
Ships were already going across the oceans bringing tobacco, sugar, cotton and other products from America to Europe so to make the journey really profitable they needed a cargo going the other way so shipped goods, including metals to Africa to exchange for slaves and then swapped out slaves for sugar etc.
Slavery was worldwide. In Africa, the Europeans just tapped into an already robust and very old Islamic slave trade, although their desire for slaves of course increased that trade quite a bit, which increased even more when slaves were desired to work the new land in the Americas. Natives in the US also had slaves before the Europeans arrived, and they even owned black slaves after the Europeans started importing them.
Race wasn’t necessary to consider someone inferior and thus worthy of slavery. Being culturally different was sufficient.
In places where disease hadnt fully killed off the indigenous peoples (central and South America), it did. The indigenous peoples worked on farms and in mines under the Hacienda system. You tend to see more African slaves in areas where those indigenous peoples rapidly died off and/or where cash crops were in high demand (also usually costal areas), such as in Haiti, the American South, and Brazil.
trade winds, and triangle trade. At the time you had to sail by wind, so to get to the americas from europe, you had to sail down to the horn of africa and then get pushed west. To get back to europe you took the gulf stream currents north east back. On each leg you carried something to trade, from america to europe you took sugar, rum, timber, cotton, raw materials… from europe to africa you took finished cloth, luxury items, finished metal tools, muskets, swords, etc… what you took from africa to america, was slaves…
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